Online booking software provider, thinkBooker, has developed a bespoke personal shopping experience for luxury, London-based fashion boutique, Browns, for use in their two London-based locations, including their new store, Browns East.

Browns was established in 1970 and is one of London’s most well-regarded fashion boutiques, having been responsible for discovering talents such as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane. The retailer was also the first to bring designers such as Calvin Klein, Armani, Jil Sander and Ralph Lauren to London.

In 2015, Browns was acquired by the global online fashion platform, FARFETCH, who have announced the development of the ‘Store of the Future’ initiative, which uses technology to deliver the same level of customer insight and analytics currently employed online, to the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retail environment.

As part of this strategy, the award-winning online booking and scheduling specialist, thinkBooker, was commissioned to develop a bespoke online booking tool to support Browns’ personal shopping experience. The new booking and scheduling system is an extension of the existing brownsfashion.com platform, and has been designed to match the look and feel of Browns established brand identity. Offering a quick and easy booking journey for the client on desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile, the system allows a client to book a personal shopping experience online by selecting a specific store, date and time. The client can also select the stylist of their choice or alternatively allow the store to select the most suitable stylist.

Adding to the user experience and in-store efficiency, clients are sent an automated email confirming details of their booking and a QR code that is used to announce the client’s arrival in store on the day. In turn, this alerts their stylist, who will be ready to greet the client and deliver an entirely personalised experience based on pre-submitted information, for instance, preferred sizing.

With a feature rich back end system, thinkBooker’s scheduling facility allows the Browns store and management teams to have complete visibility of all appointments booked with each stylist on any given day and time.

Fanny Hawkins, FARFETCH’S Store of the Future Partners Executive, said: “The delivery of an online personal shopper experience for the Browns stores is an important element of our vision to use the advancements in technology to free up time and help make the consumer experience more human.”

“We spoke to several online booking providers, but thinkBooker were the only ones who could meet our exact brief of delivering the full booking journey within the Browns brand, and to deliver the system to the very short timeframe that we were working to. The team at thinkBooker have done an amazing job turning this project into a reality in such a short space of time and we are looking forward to working with them to further develop our offering in the future.”

Gareth Rees Jones, Managing Director of thinkBooker said: “We are very proud to have been chosen by FARFETCH and Browns to deliver a key part of their ‘Store of the Future’ strategy. As a fully bespoke online booking and scheduling solution, we work across many different industries but it is really exciting to be working with such a well-regarded and pioneering brand within the retail industry.

“With a very short timeframe in which to deliver the project, it certainly presented our UX, design and development teams with a challenge but the willingness of the team at FARFETCH to work collaboratively with us, meant that we were able to meet the deadline for launch and to provide a highly effective online booking solution for their clients”.

The Browns Personal Shopping Experience is available to book online at www.booking.brownsfashion.com. Please note that you will need to register for an account in order to make a booking.